Digitisation Target achievement

I&B Minister Smt. Ambika Soni meets Delhi CM to review Digitisation progress
73% Digitisation Target achieved
4 national MSOs announce rates for consumer packages for Digital Cable TV

Smt. Ambika Soni, Minister for Information and Broadcasting today met the Chief Minister of NCT of Delhi, Smt. Shiela Dixit, to discuss the progress made towards Cable TV Digitization.  In 4 metro cities of Chennai, Delhi, Kolkata and Mumbai Cable TV Digitization deadline is 31^st October 2012. During discussions Smt. Soni emphasized the importance of meeting the digitization deadline of 31^st October and sought the support of the Delhi Government. The Chief Minister of NCT of Delhi assured the Minister of Information and Broadcasting of full support of the Delhi Government for the Digitization exercise.  She also asked the Chief Secretary to ask all  SDMs to convene meetings with stakeholders to achieve digitization roadmap well within the time .

In Delhi, 14.74 Lakhs Set Top Boxes(STBs) have already been installed as against the target of 24.74 lakhs, thereby achieving 60% target.  If DTH is also taken into consideration, then the digitization progress is about 70% as 8.77 lakh people in Delhi have already subscribed to DTH services.  Delhi has shown good pace of installation of STBs in the last one month and currently about 15000 STBs are being installed per day in the city.

Recently Ministry has embarked on an aggressive public awareness campaign wherein a syncronised advertisement on digitization deadline was shown on more than 200 television channels.  Radio Jingles, Print advertisements and SMS campaign have also enhanced public awareness about digitization exercise.  With all these efforts, digitization percentage in four metro cities has gone to 73%.   

Towards achieveing the goal of digitization , 4 National-level Multi System Operators(MSOs) viz., DEN, Digi Cable, Hathway, WWIL have also announced rates for consumer packages for Digital Cable.  As per TRAI’s stipulation, the Basic Service Tier (BST) consisting of atleast 100 channels for Rs.100 has also been announced by some of them. The bouquet rates for pay channels is as below

Name of the Package	No. of Channels	Rate in Rs. ( exclusive of taxes)
Digicable
Basic	145	180
Gold	151	200
Premium	165	250
Hathway Cable and Datacom Ltd.
Basic	135	160
Medium	198	220
Premium	242	275
DEN
Pack 1	112	180
Pack 2	219	225
Pack 3	235	270
WWIL
Janta	118	100
Popular 1( Kolkata)	151	150
Popular 2( Mumbai)	153	150
Popular 3( Delhi)	142	150

Consumers will also be given the option of choosing channels from a la carte list.  MSOs had earlier announced a combined promotional rate of STB for Rs.799/-.  MSOs have also announced consumer Care Service wherein Toll Free numbers including consumer charters have also been made available on the respective website.